L’Etape du California 2012

APRIL 28, 2012
ONTARIO, CA

                I remember having fond memories of the L’Etape du California after competing in 2011. The overall course was challenging with just over 11,000 ft of climbing over 79 miles with a mountain top finish at Mt. Baldy. The most thrilling aspect of the race is that you are riding on the actual stage 7 course that the pro peloton will be riding in May. They creatively structured the race such that the only competitive timed portions of the race occur up two designated king of the mountain (KOM) climbs: Glendora Mountain Road and Mount Baldy Road. You are still given an overall start-to-finish time, but there is no prize or ranking for that time, it is just nice to compare your time to the pros. I came prepared this time with electrolyte tablets that you could drop into your 16 oz water bottle and would dissolve. I tried them out before during the week and they tasted pretty good. The orange tasted like orange, but you could still taste a slight hint of salt. I figured it was worth it since I definitely didn’t want my legs to shut down again like they had during the Mulholland Challenge.

                The morning started in Ontario. I remember getting ready in my hotel room and checking the weather report: sunny with a high of 85 degrees. Finally, some warm southern California weather! Sure beats the near freezing start at Solvang or the brisk, cloudy, ride in Malibu. I went out for a quick warm up as usual and headed to the staging area for the start. I decided to start with the fastest pack this time around, unlike Mulholland. I figured that it would do me some good to always be with a group of riders throughout the race to help drag me to the finish. Even if these guys proved to be real race category 1 studs, there would be no problem dropping off the back and hooking up with the next group coming up the roads. The fastest starting group was categorized as 18 mph average speed. I thought this would be a little fast, considering there was a lot of climbing ahead of us, but I figured I wouldn’t be doing much work at the front.

                I was one of the first riders to enter the staging area. A few others trickled to the front as it got closer to the race start. We chit chatted a bit and all made jokes about how crazy we were to pay for this tortuous race. The VIP’s started to line up in front of us and we all got a good look at NBA legend Bill Walton. Turns out he liked the race enough to do it again this year too. Some of the volunteers asked to take photos with us believing that we were all hot shots and favorites to win the race. This made me chuckle a bit knowing that the real pros would blow all of us out of the water, but it was still nice to have a mini paparazzi group snapping photos of us all. Right before we were going to head out on our way, the MC doing the start countdown pointed out last year’s second place finisher. He was a few riders away from me and smugly nodded to the acknowledgement. ‘OK, let this guy go, he’s pro’ I thought after hearing that.

After some fanfare and music, we were on our way and took a right onto G street out of the staging area. I was about ten riders back from the front and saw one guy jump to the front and take a right turn onto Vineyard. Huh, that’s funny I thought we were supposed to stay on G street. The rest of the riders in front of me followed him and I figured that they all knew the correct route and I must have overlooked something in the course. I saw the second place pro briefly talk to the guy that sprinted to the front and throw one of his hands up in the air in frustration. He slowly pulled back and in an annoyed tone cried, “Anyone know the right way to go? This guy doesn’t know the route.” HA! So I was right! Guess that was a funny psychological experiment on how easy it is to second guess yourself and go along with the mob. I piped up and told everyone that we needed to make a left and take one of the cross streets to Euclid.  We all turned on 4^th street and were shortly back on course once we reached Euclid.

One could say that the climbing started there. Euclid Avenue was a long 6-7 mile stretch that was at a steady gradient of 3%. Some false flat! We all cranked it out at a steady pace of 18 mph, nothing too hard or fast, but we weren’t taking it easy either. One by one the elastic snapped from the yo-yoing riders in front and they were quickly swallowed up by the charging peloton behind them. My legs felt really strong and didn’t have much trouble holding the pace with the group up to the foot of the climb up to Mt. Baldy Village.

This was the first major climb of the day. I can’t recall if it was a category 2 or 1, but the road up to Mt. Baldy Village is long and steep. The road mostly barked, or roared rather, with 6-8% sections of road. Every now and then it would snarl and bite you with a 12% section just to let you know it was still the boss and couldn’t be tamed without a fight. The climb did more to splinter the group, and I remember focusing on not staying with riders as much as just stamping out my own rhythm around 80 rpm and keep my heart rate under control. Unfortunately, my bottom bracket was in need of a bit more grease and would emit a small popping noise with every revolution of my pedal stroke when we reached a steep section. I sheepishly apologized to my new found riding friends for the metronome I installed on my bike. My legs still felt strong, even though the climb was proving to be more of a test than originally planned. Furthermore, it still felt good to see that we were swallowing up the lonely souls that were being popped off the groups in front of us. Funny, I hadn’t remembered this climb being that difficult… I’m sure my brain happily erased those memories of pain with the ebb and flow of time over the past year. We reached the village with some huffing and puffing and turned onto Glendora Ridge road but still had about a mile of climbing at 6% before it leveled off and we got to enjoy a nice rolling hill descent.

Most of the riders had fallen back from our original group once we started the descent. My new friend from La Grange cycling team, Joe, and I took turns leading along the sweeping bends and corners of Glendora Ridge. There weren’t many hairpin turns along Glendora so it became quite fun to skillfully maneuver each turn at speed and feel the wind blow through your hair. We reached a short uphill section and I needed to shift down to my small chain-ring after pushing a big gear throughout the descent section. KA-CHINK! I looked down and saw that I had dropped my chain on the shift. I calmly told Joe that I had dropped my chain and pulled over to the side of the road. He wished me luck and pushed on. I was back on my bike in 30 seconds at the expense of getting my fingers a little greasy and hooked up with a small group that had originally started the Mt. Baldy climb with me.

We reached the first full rest stop and I filled up my water bottles. I made sure to try and drink a lot of water and finish a bottle an hour as a rule of thumb. I filled up, popped a few electrolyte tablets in, and I was on my way again this time descending the windy East Lake Road. I had forgotten how much fun descending wide, well-paved roads could be! Feeling the thrill of leaning into each tight bend and having the lateral g forces push you slightly into your seat was enough to make you smile with excitement.

After having fun on the descent, I continued onto the flatter, rolling hill section of the course. I ran into a team of six or seven cyclists as well as a few random riders that had hitched a ride to their train, just like I was going to do. Again, they were going fairly fast, but not pushing the pace along. Furthermore, we just let the team do all the work at the front since they were well organized and wanted to control the pace. As Phil Ligit would say, I was in the ticket collector’s position, where I would do no work and just make sure everyone was safely on board. Unfortunately, this period of a ticket collecting didn’t last long. One of the members of the team encountered a puncture flat, and they all stopped until he had fixed it, while the other two riders and I continued up the road.

That was when things got hairy. As a small group of three riders along the flat, but still rolling hill section of the course, it became critical that we each do our turn on the front to conserve our energy while still keeping up the pace. However, things got crazy, fast… The other two riders were really stomping out a fast tempo going 27-28 mph along the flatter sections. It was fast enough where I had to skip my turn at the front a few times just to keep up. But when I was in their slip-stream, I was able to stay in my tempo to sub-threshold heart rate zone. I figured I could keep the pace up and that it would be in my best interest to stay with the fast group instead of letting them race ahead and have to do all that work by myself. So I gritted my teeth when I was in front and kept on cranking out the miles with those guys. We quickly approached the rest stop on Sierra Madre Blvd and coasted in to refill our water.

While at the rest stop, one of the riders in the group turns to me and says, “Wow man, great job!” With a puzzled look that I’m sure was hidden by my sunglasses, I thanked him not really knowing what I had done to incite such a comment of praise. I figured that he was just telling me good job for staying with them since I was skipping turns at the beginning. With some more water on board and a quick bathroom break, we were off again, slowly riding now towards the first KOM climb up Glendora Mountain Road. This time the pace was much more manageable. We were all riding together and chit chatted a bit. The other rider exclaimed, “Man did you see that team with us? They were really good, all out of my league.” Now I’m confused. The pace set by the team wasn’t blistering like theirs. I thought these two guys were pro! After all, they did start in the fastest group like me. Then as we turned on Glendora Mountain Road, just before the start of the climb, the same rider that praised the team tells us that he isn’t much of a climber and is just going to doddle up the climb to save some energy for the final ascent to the summit of Mt. Baldy. Now I’m really confused! If he wanted to save energy, why was he pushing so hard on a section of the course that wasn’t even competitively timed? Now I know how a calculator feels when you try to divide by zero…

Glendora Mountain Road is a category 2 climb that becomes more of a war of attrition than a heavy-weight slugfest. It keeps a pretty constant gradient of 6% for nearly the whole climb with no real steep sections to make your legs cry. It just keeps that 6% going for 6.6 miles… It’s like cycling’s version of Chinese water torture where they tie you down and just drip a single droplet of water on your head every few seconds. At first, you laugh at it, “Ha! That’s it? This isn’t so bad.” But after an hour, you are ready to tell them anything just to make that relentless dripping stop. Knowing that the final climb up Mt. Baldy road was the real test, I decided not to kick it into race mode, and just rode tempo up Glendora: fast, but nothing in the red. I talked to the remaining rider with me and he had the same thing in mind, so we ascended together.

I immediately noticed that my heart rate was higher than usual for the amount of power I was putting out. I was spinning at around 200 watts while my heart rate steadily climbed up to high sub-threshold. Usually I’m in the tempo heart rate zone that is below sub-threshold at that kind of watt output. I figured it was the effects of fatigue from the previous efforts put in on the rolling hills. I decided to back off a little until my heart rate settled down and let the other rider do all the pace making. There wasn’t a lot of tree cover going up Glendora, only rocky, desert-like mountain walls with mangled shrubs protruding from the weathered cracks. This made for a very warm and toasty climb since you aren’t going terribly fast to help cool you off. I remember sweating quite a bit as we started the climb and every now and then feel the intense sting of one of the salt filled beads fall into my eye.

About 2.5 miles into the climb, my heart rate continued to rise to my threshold level. My legs weren’t complaining more than usual, just the normal level of dissent that my brain easily handled and told them to quit whining and get back to work. I knew I wasn’t going to have a shut-down again like Mulholland, but I guess my heart wanted me to back off more after cranking it with those other two guys. Ugh... great! Those two guys wore me out just before the important section! I shifted into my granny gear and decided spin up the rest of the way and let the guy I was riding with go. My legs enjoyed the easier load and were happy to keep on spinning. Just after I passed the 5km to go (3.2 miles) sign I looked down to check on my heart rate and power output again. My heart rate had increased to a super-threshold state, while my power was dipping around 180 watts. This was really weird I thought, but it is hard to lower your heart rate on a climb after you get going. About 500 meters later I noticed something else, I had stopped sweating… I no longer saw the glisten of perspiration on my tanned forearms or felt the moisture on my eyebrows. Damn! Dehydration?! I thought I had been drinking plenty of water! I drank enough even to have to use the restroom at the previous rest stop. I sipped on some of my water slowly, making sure not to drink too much and get sick. That tied me over for a little while, but I hit another wall 500m down the road. All of a sudden, I became extremely tired. Not tired as in fatigued from riding a bike, but tired as in my body wanted to fall asleep. My eyes became very heavy and my arms were weak, almost like my body wanted me to take a nap while still pedaling on my bike. After this I knew something wasn’t right: the steadily increasing heart rate, abrupt stop in perspiration, and now drowsiness.

I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I knew that there were SRAM support vehicles and ambulances patrolling the climb to give struggling riders help. I turned to look back and wait for one to come up the road. As I waited, none of the symptoms subsided; I was still very weak and tired with my heart beating very fast. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long before an ambulance came around the bed and I waved them down. I told them I thought I had heat stroke or dehydration and described my symptoms. The roughly agreed and offered to transport me to the rest stop at the top of the climb. We loaded up my bike and I sat in the back with one of the EMTs and enjoyed the air conditioning. I was still very drowsy and weak, but the air conditioning of the van felt amazing and I quickly calmed down. The EMT started asking me questions like if I had a headache or vomited. I told him that I hadn’t, but I felt like I had no energy left and was very sleepy. He just nodded and told me to relax. After a few minutes, we started chit chatting about the race and how long it was, how much climbing was involved, and that it was a stage in the Tour of California. With every description of the races difficulty the paramedic’s eyes seemed to get wider and wider. “80 miles?! That’s nuts!” he exclaimed once. I chuckled a bit since it was actually shorter than most races and we headed to the top.

Once at the rest stop, I got out and drank lots of water and ate plenty of food just to cover my bases. I was feeling much better after the cool five minute car ride, and the peanut butter - banana sandwiches tasted amazing. I went back to the van and told them I was feeling better, but wanted to know if I should be transported back to the starting line or needed to go to the hospital. The EMT said that he noticed I started sweating again after a few minutes in the van and said I was very coherent when talking to him so he didn’t think I had a serious case of heat stroke nor needed to go to the hospital. They offered to let me rest in their van as they tried to figure out a transportation plan. Unfortunately, there was no cell phone reception at the rest stop at Glendora Ridge road, so we couldn’t arrange for anyone to pick me up. Legally, they were only able to transport me to the hospital, and since I didn’t need to go, they could only look after me at the top. After waiting in the van for 10 minutes or so, I decided I was feeling good enough to limp along up Glendora Ridge and then turn to head back down Mt. Baldy Road to the start in Ontario. They wished me good luck and I was back on my bike with plenty of water and feeling much better.

I had to go back up Glendora Ridge road to Mt. Baldy Village, the same road I went down near the beginning of the race. Needless to say, it was much more fun to descend than go back up. Oddly enough, it isn’t categorized since it has some short downhill sections, but it is mostly an uphill climb at around 4-5% in most sections. I made no effort to push it and just happily spun along in my lowest gear, barely pushing 150 watts. I hooked up with one guy that was going around the same pace and we silently went up the road, but we were silent for different reasons. He was thinking about the pain and torture that awaited him on the road up to the summit, and I was thinking about keeping everything together long enough so I could head back down to the start. Oddly enough I felt really strong going up Glendora and contemplated making a run at the finish. But I quickly decided against it since going to the summit of Mt. Baldy is torture when you’re feeling good, let alone recovering from heat sickness! Furthermore, I was disqualified from the competition since I was given a ride to the top, so I really didn’t have anything to gain by finishing.

I made it to the final rest stop at the top of Glendora Ridge fairly easily and took my time at the rest stop. I filled up on water and ate some more. I grabbed a seat in a nice tented area in the shade and enjoyed my drink and food. I noticed that the others sitting down all had a spaced out zombie like look on their faces. Their expressions conveyed the dread and terror of the climb that awaited them. For once I was glad I wasn’t going up to the top of the mountain. After I finished my meal, I got back onto the saddle and made my way back down to Ontario. It was a nice and easy descent the whole way down.

When I made it back to the hotel, part of me felt empty inside. This was the first race I’ve entered and couldn’t make it to the finish. That wasn’t an easy feeling to shake, but I had to tell myself that I hadn’t really given up as much as I was a victim of bad luck. There wasn’t really anything I could have done to combat the heat and prevent what happened. I drank plenty of water and ate my normal fill of food along the race. I guess it just wasn’t in the cards for me to finish the race that day. Most of the time, bad luck comes in the form of a flat tire, broken spoke or chain, but that day it came in the form of heat sickness. It’s a tough pill to swallow when something like that happens to you, but part of developing as a rider is knowing that those things happen sometimes. You just have to roll with the punches and get back in the saddle to try it again…. One thing is for sure, my stomach is full of anger and I will have my revenge next year.